Fairewinds Energy Education’s mission is to demystify nuclear power. Margaret and Maggie discuss the current conditions at nuclear power plants in the US and at Fukushima Daiichi, including the harmful effects of exposure to tritium. Margaret Harrington also asks how Maggie and Arnie met while working in the nuclear industry.

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MH: This is Burlington and here we are in the Channel 17 newsroom for our ongoing nuclear-free future conversation. I’m your host, Margaret Harrington, and I’m happy on the viewers’ behalf to welcome Maggie Gundersen, the founder and president of Fairewinds Energy Education, centered right here in Burlington, Vermont. Thank you, Maggie, for being my guest today.

MG: Thank you, Margaret, for having me. I always love doing this show with you.

MG: Yes. And it’s true you have come to this program several times, always giving us vital information that we need in the field of nuclear education. So could you explain for our viewers and for me, again, what exactly Fairewinds Energy Education is, and what you do?

MG: Fairewinds Energy Education is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, and all of our funds come from individual donors, from foundations and grantors. So that’s what it means to have a 501(c)3 and that the IRS gives us a tax status and any donations can be tax deductible. Our mission is to educate people all around the world about nuclear power risks, nuclear power safety issues, nuclear power operations. We’ve done research on nuclear plants all over the United States and overseas. We’ve spent considerable time and continue reviewing everything that happened at the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.

MH: Yes. And to refresh our memory, Maggie, the date was 2011. So we’re going into the third year.

MG: Yes. And things are as bad as many of us, many experts had anticipated.

MH: Now when you’re talking about experts, for our viewers, let’s remind ourselves that Arnie Gundersen, your husband, is the Chief Engineer for Fairewinds Energy Education.

MG: Yes. And for our expert witness firm, which is Fairewinds Associates. And that’s where we do the testimony through that branch. We work for interveners on cases and state governments. We’ve done significant work for the State of Vermont, some of the prefects in Japan, some of the provinces in Canada. So we have clients all over the world and work on analyses that show what might be wrong in a nuclear plant. For example, last year one of the cases we did was San Onofre. And San Onofre nuclear plants have closed down because they did not correctly design their steam generators. And the result of that was that they started leaking radiation and were a safety threat to the people of Southern California.

MH: (3:38) So Arnie Gundersen then testified to what agency – was it to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?

MG: Yes. He testified to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and to several city councils and county governments in California. He did five expert reports – we did together. We met in the nuclear industry. Arnie was the lead engineer on a nuclear project and I was in charge of public relations for that project. And that’s how we met. So.

MH: That’s quite a turnaround, Maggie Gundersen, isn’t it? I mean you were speaking on behalf of the nuclear power industry.

MG: I was. I was speaking in Upstate New York near Lake Ontario where there was a proposed nuclear power plant site. And I had come from one of the nuclear vendors, Combustion Engineering, which has since closed. It’s a vendor like General Electric is a vendor, who designed and built Fukushima Daiichi plants. And I worked for that vendor in an area called Nuclear Reload Core Design. So every year to 18 months, depending on the size of the plant, the plant has to be shut down in order to put new fuel in. And I worked in that group with engineers for Combustion Engineering.

MH: Doing public relations?

MG: Doing calculations first and then afterwards Combustion Engineering recommended me for the job in nuclear public relations. And so I went ahead and I took that job up in Oswego, New York.

MH: And what did that involve? Which people did you want to reach with the public relations?

MG: We wanted to reach the county. We wanted to reach the government of New York State. We wanted to reach the people who were living there. I did a lot of one-on-one conversations with people near the plant. So it was an interesting job. I love the area and I love the people up there. And I was telling them that the plants were safe because that’s what I had been taught. That’s what the industry – that’s a myth – one of the myths that the industry perpetuates.

MH: Was that power plant built in Oswego?

MG: It wasn’t. And the reason was Governor Kerry, when he was Governor of New York State, put a stop to any more nuclear power plants and this was – oh, 1976 or ’77 – I think it was ’77 that he stopped it, maybe even ’78. Yeah, ’78.

MG: What was the reason why he stopped it? Do you know?

MG: (6:28) He stopped it in 1978 because he wanted to make sure that there was a repository for the waste. And here we are and there is still no methodology. It’s not just that there’s not a place; there’s no methodology that works to contain all this waste. But now there’s so much more.

MH: Exactly. And when you speak of nuclear waste, we’re talking about that failed repository out west which –

MG: Yucca Mountain.

MH: Yucca Mountain, which has not come to be. And also what’s called mobile Chernobyl. What is that? Mobile Chernobyl. It’s toting around the nuclear waste all across the country to different places.

MG: There are different waste repositories that they’re still trying to put in now. What concerns me with any nuclear waste if we look at Handford (?7:28) for example, which is a Department of Energy site, that has nuclear plants also as well as manufactured weapons. There’s waste leaking everywhere. There is literally no way to contain it. In South Carolina, which is a waste repository for both commercial waste at Barnwell and Nuclear Department of Energy waste also, that – it’s terrible. Because tritium is moving in a wedge as it did on the Vermont Yankee site. In South Carolina, it’s towards the Savannah River and in Vermont, it was towards the Connecticut River. And tritium is sort of – it moves ahead of any other radioactive isotopes. So here it is, all these years later. I mean 50 years later. And there’s still no solution where to store the waste.

MH: Maggie, can you tell me what awakened you to turn around completely in the opposite direction about nuclear power?

MG: There were several things. One of the first things was getting to know Dr. Helen Caldecott. And she had come to speak at the University of Vermont. And she validated a lot of things that I had been finding in research for different clients. The research was showing that the nuclear industry does not have control or even an idea of what’s really escaping from operating nuclear power plants. And they don’t know how to manage the waste. So those two things. She spoke to me about tritium particularly. And the first time I spent considerable time with her was on a show that you had us both on, so that was a long time ago. And what she found is that there’s new science, new – 10 years old, 15 years old – so not that recent, that shows that tritium stays in the body for more than a year and that it crosses the placental barrier and can do damage to a fetus and that it also can impair organs. And the industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, says that tritium is not threatening and that it passes through people like water. And it’s not true. So one of the concerns that we have and we’ve faced is that tritium always is treated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as if it’s noninvasive and it doesn’t matter. And the regulations just are not up to date on the current science that shows that it’s very harmful to human health. So that first turned me. And Arnie still was very pro nuclear until the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. (10:45) And then he believed – he was so shocked that every single safety system failed.

MH: Maggie – are you jumping from the Three Mile Island? Because I know that Arnie Gundersen testified at Three Mile Island, right?

MG: Yes. Yes. Arnie was the expert witness in the plaintiff’s case on Three Mile Island. And he showed that significant radiation was released. And at the 30th anniversary of Three Mile Island, Dr. Steve Wing, who is an epidemiologist, came there to speak and Arnie – they were both brought to the Pennsylvania State House to speak at Harrisburg – and they had never met before. And they had never looked at each other’s work. And both of their work fit together perfectly. It was really a surprise for all of us. Because Steve had all these epidemiological studies that showed cancers around Three Mile Island. And Arnie showed significant amounts of radiation came out in his studies. And Steve’s studies – they went together, they fit together. Where the NRC has denied that there was significant radiation released. Now this year, we have been invited – Arnie’s been invited to speak at TMI 35. And that is the 35th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island and Arnie is giving the keynote at Penn State, which is hosting the event. It’s a two-day symposium.

MH: So just the fact that Arnie Gundersen has been invited to do that shows something of a turnaround in the awareness of what – how damaging nuclear power plants can be to the people and the environment, even in the five years.

MG: Yes.

MH: So it’s all coming together for me and my viewers also about what your mission is with Fairewinds. It’s for the education – energy education, to wake us up about the dangers and also what can be done about it besides awakening us.

MG: That’s right. That’s right. I like the crew we have. You’ve had some of our crew members – our media director, Nathanial White-Joyal and Arnie and me and now our new Director of Operations. And it’s a great crew. Everybody brings unique skills and we have a really good group of viewers or I guess you could call them members – I’m not sure – who write to us and ask lots of questions. And we respond via video, podcasts that are audios and also in blogs.

MH: And you keep us up to speed in what is going on in the nuclear power industry.

MG: We’re trying. Because there’s so much – I don’t know who coined the word years and years ago, and I should look that up, but there’s so much nukespeak that the industry uses. And people say what does this mean, what does it mean when a nuclear plant goes critical. That sounds like it’s going to explode. Well, actually, that’s when the reaction is producing energy. So the terminology is a way, I think, to put a veil over the truth of what’s happening. And we try to get that out there. (14:59)

MH: Of course, because to talk nuclear or to do nukespeak is supposed to be a world that most of us cannot enter, especially the lay person, the nonscientific person. And we are left either with the silence that the media gives all of these questions, these critical questions, or else with denials of the dangers of nuclear power and the reputation of Helen Caldecott has been assailed throughout the decades that she has worked to awaken us, our awareness of the dangers of nuclear power. She has been constantly pummeled by the press, by the media.

MG: There are some people who have targeted her expressly. And they are people who have worked for the industry for years and years and years. And I think the media needs to ask them, well – and look further and say how much are these people getting paid, what are they invested in, why are they writing this. There was a piece that came out – I think it was three days ago – in Forbes magazine, that’s just outrageous on what it says about Fukushima and that nothing happened and that radiation is fine. And the gentleman who wrote that is a lobbyist and has worked in the nuclear industry for 35 or 40 years and he worked at the Hanford site and he’s been tied into all these things. And the day that the accident was happening at Fukushima Daiichi, he was giving testimony in Washington State in the legislature and his quote – I don’t remember it exactly, but it was something to the effect of operating a nuclear power plant is as safe as running ToysRUs. So I mean the leaps are absurd. Or that when people say oh, if you eat bananas, you’re getting radiation. Yes, there is radiation in bananas and it’s natural. But it’s not the manmade, generated radiation that’s at Fukushima Daiichi or your other nuclear plants that causes cancers. It just isn’t.

MH: So would lay that denial of the dangers or the more-than-dangers of nuclear power at the feet of the money to be made from this – the nuclear power industry?

MG: Sure. And why does Forbes give this man – he has a column in there all the time – so why does Forbes magazine – unless you look back at what was – it used to be called the capitalist tool – so Forbes magazine is part of this corporate structure and they’re looking for how to help the industry and they help corporations again and again and again. And that’s ??18:22. They’re not looking at the scientific truth. And yet I saw 7, 8, 10 media outlets quote this article. And it’s simply not true.

MH: So I see the need for Fairewinds Energy Education and for the fact – the fact that you and Arnie have gone around the world also in giving testimony, including in Japan. And Arnie also wrote a book that is in Japanese. Has it been translated into English yet? About the dangers of the power plant.

MG: No. I have the rights to the book in English and two years ago, February 9th, I was in a car accident and had a concussion. And I was in the process – that’s exactly when the book was being released in Japanese, because that’s where we went first to make it available to the Japanese people. (19:24) And the publisher was working with me on doing an English version and I wasn’t able to bring it to fruition. I’m starting back on it now and it was number 4 – I’m sorry – for four months it was number 1 on the Japanese Amazon bestseller list for nonfiction. And it’s sold many, many, many copies. And it’s a wonderful –

MH: And can you give me some idea of what is in it?

MG: It went detail through detail, how the plant was originally designed and built and then what happened at the accident and why these systems failed. So it’s an interesting – and what happened in terms of with the prime minister and what he was trying to do and not being able to protect the people adequately. It’s a sad book. It has – it’s very sad when you read it, but it’s true. It’s very factual.

MH: And all the time, there is new information about Fukushima coming out and then set aside by the media. Isn’t that so? About the ongoing dangers. And at the same time, there is – what is presented as a problem in Japan that the nuclear power reactors are not being set into motion again.

MG: Well, two things just came up this week. TEPCO just announced that all the data it collected for almost 3 years is wrong. And that they had miscalculated how much radiation was released. A lot of people are stepping forward and saying, was some of that done in order to make sure that Tokyo got the Olympic bid. I don’t know. I can’t answer that. And then just this week – and I think there’s a press conference today in Atlanta about it – Union of Concerned Scientists released a new book called Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster. And it’s by Ed Lyman and Dave Lochbaum with the Union of Concerned Scientists. And they’ve reviewed the accident in detail. I haven’t read it yet. It’s next on Fairewinds book list. And we’ll look at that in detail.

MH: When you say it’s the next on Fairewinds book list, what is that, Maggie?

MG: Every month, we feature a new book that we’re reading, that members of our team are reading that has to do with energy or nuclear power. And we have quite a book list up on the site. For six months, we had been doing it weekly. But people were telling us it was moving too fast – please leave it up there longer. So we’re doing it monthly. And we detail all different books, from some of Helen Caldecott’s books to Power Struggle, which is a book about how powerlines were originally done and energy, to The Tipping Point, which – a Vermont author that you had on – Mark Pendergrast – wrote, which was about Japan and its opportunities to move on to renewable energy. So we featured some of Amory Lovett’s (23:08) work. And he has been on our video or interview with Arnie. So there’s just some really – it’s a good selection of material.

MH: And I hope, Maggie, that with this program, too, that your audience grows, because we do need to know more about what’s going on. And I thank you so much for educating us in this.

MG: I thank you so much for hosting us all the time and having us on. Thank you.

MH: Thank you very much, Maggie. Until next time. And for our viewers, thank you for watching. And thank you, Maggie Gundersen from Fairewinds Energy Education. Goodbye for now.